Mirror Image Masked in Mist
by Ramzes
Summary: One is a king's son. One is a king's bastard. One is a king's hand. One is a king's brother. Mistrust and resentment are there, chronicles say, and that's right. But chronicles cannot catch the essence of it: they are like mirror images of each other. Twisted mirror images.
1. Bad Omens

**Mirror Image Masked in Mist**

 _Bad Omens_

"I'd really like for you to reconsider."

Missy's voice was as soft as ever, her face half-hidden by the shadows the lamps were throwing. Her embroidery was in her lap. Everything was just like it had been a year ago… except for Aegon's expression. He was staring at her with something akin to the disdain he usually reserved for his sister and queen. "You should not meddle," he said. "Women know nothing of war."

 _Will you know something of this one_ , Missy wondered. With his handsomeness turning to fat so rapidly, he could hardly endure the hardships of a campaign, although he, of course, didn't know it yet. He'd learn it the hard way, most likely. "But we know loss and pain," she said.

"The losses will be all Dorne's," he snapped.

"And ours," she reminded him gently.

"No loss is too great a price for greatness," he informed her with the air of someone revealing a great secret. A secret that women, of course, had no access to, except for his magnanimity.

"The women in your realm will beg to differ. They just want their men alive and…"

"Seven hells, it's as if I'm listening to Naerys!" he barked. "Naerys and her gods! The subject is closed!"

Missy knew that her best bet was to follow his wishes but she had to make one last attempt. Anything that might disincline him for starting a new war with Dorne was a good thing. "Princess Mariah is with child. Surely you would not want to place her or the babe in danger?"

He huffed. By now, all of Missy's attendants had dispersed. No one wanted to enter an angry Aegon's sight. "She'll be soon sent to Dorne anyway before her last mongrel is born. Pity that there's no chance that she'll miscarry it out of worry, as fools say. No such luck, she carries and calves like a cow. The best we can hope for is that the child turns out to be a monstrosity, signifying the monstrosity that my son's marriage is."

His ugly words made her shiver to her core. In the beginning, she had thought it was just his fierce temper, his treatment of his family, that he was spouting such ugliness with his tongue and not his heart; now, she had come to realize that those were things he truly thought, all of them.

"It wasn't her decision to come here and wed Daeron," she reminded. "Will it not be better to try and take Dorne with…"

"With peace?" he mocked. "It cannot happen and I don't _want_ it to happen. They don't deserve a peaceful welcome into our realm. And I will not be deprived of my glory."

Suddenly, he rounded on her. "What do you know of war and glory anyway? You only know your small cares, your charities…"

The same one where we take care of women who had lost their breadwinners in the Young Dragon's war and are now too old to make even the modest living they had gotten used to, Missy agreed silently.

"Peace and charity, love and accord all around," he mocked. "That's all that interests you."

 _And my children_ , Missy thought. Once, long ago, he had interested her as well, this handsome king. She had been so eager to get to know him… and then she had.

"For years, you didn't give me a son and the one that you finally produced was sick and scarred even in your womb. You couldn't do even this properly. What's next, a series of stillbirths and miscarriages, again like my queen?"

Missy gasped at his cruelty and saw that this delighted him. He had never been this way with her before. Up to the last day of her last pregnancy, he had been doting and showing her off to the world, claiming that she'd give him a proper Targaryen son in the beginning of the Targaryen era in Dorne. But now, his fascination with a kind heart seemed to have started wearing off.

"Daeron will do as I say… and so will you. I'll hear nothing more on the matter," Aegon finished and waved at her to summon her chambermaids and get ready for bed.

For now, he still wanted her. But it wouldn't be long before she'd be free of his ever increasing weight on her at night… and the power of his favour. She and her children would have to fend for themselves. Not for the first time, she wondered what that would entail, what she would do if her successor would not turn as kind as she was.

And still, the visitor she received the next morning set her mind to ease somewhat. The Prince of Dragonstone had obeyed the King's summon, arriving at night. That was the first time Missy saw Mariah of Dorne in almost a year – and she was coming to visit as if she had never left, bringing a gift for the newborn with white hair and red eyes, the newborn declared a bad omen since the moment he had emerged from the womb.

* * *

"You will do as I say."

"Indeed I won't."

"She will leave and go back to her sands and snakes. Baelor should have never dragged her out of them anyway!"

The King's voice was rising in anger. Daeron, though, remained calm and patient, as if he were explaining something to their ever curious six year old. "She isn't going anywhere. I am not going to repudiate her, ever."

A crash. Something hurled against the wall, most likely. Mariah turned her attention back to the petition she was reading but it was hard to focus on it when her own fate was being decided in the next room. Her – and her boys'. She had placed her full trust in Daeron years ago and had never had a cause to doubt the soundness of her decision – but Aegon was the King and he hated her. What if…?

"I am not going to suffer an enemy in my home."

"Mariah isn't an enemy". Daeron's voice was still calm. "And it's you who tried to break into their homes anyway, am I not right? It's your war, not theirs."

Mariah felt a surge of relief and pride in him. A new thing hurled against the wall but no crash this time. A golden goblet, most likely. Her goodmother and Melissa had warned them to be prepared for an unpleasant clash and still Mariah felt sick and vulnerable when she heard Aegon offering the girl to Daeron. She couldn't see her, of course, but her own bulging belly and thickened thighs could not compare either way. The other woman could at least see her feet, for sure! The fears of every woman with child came rushing to her mind: the pain, the ever looming presence of the Stranger who arrived in the birthing chamber along with the Mother, each insisting that it was now their time. She could lose Daeron's favour until the birth; she could die and then her children would be left in a place that had already dubbed them "the Dornish ones"; she could indeed deliver a stillborn or even a deformed child as her detractors predicted – and it would be all her goodfather's fault!

"Father," Daeron said coldly and determinedly, his voice a well-sharpened knife, "take your intentions and this girl wherever you want them. I have my Mariah. I am not giving her up."

The slamming of a door. The sound of angry steps echoing against the walls and Mariah's ribcage, on the white marble floor of the hallway. Mariah looked down and took a deep calming breath. It was over. The worst was behind them. Daeron would argue with his father, lose his temper from time to time, Aegon would subject them to japes and minor humiliations but the worst was over – excluding the war itself, of course.

And then she gasped and rose abruptly when she realized that the tremors wracking her body were not because of the slammed door, the stormy steps. She was producing them, her babe's determination to escape feeding them. After three times in the birthing bed where everything had happened in the right time, the right way, the right hardship, she would now deliver her last a month before her time. No matter if it was ready to see the world. No matter who would snatch both of them, the Stranger or the Mother.

With her earlier births, she forgot the worst about them pretty soon. But she remembered this one years later. The sheer agony of it. The potions maesters gave her because her excruciating pains were not strong enough to push her babe out, so they had to be increased. The fear that the child would slip out dead as many at court undoubtedly expected or deformed as just so many undoubtedly hope. Her feverish wish to die, die, die and not suffer a moment longer. The hands reaching inside to correct the babe's positioning – that was something that made her wake up at night drenched in cold sweat months later, her mind able to recreate the torture to the tiniest details. The gasps when the babe emerged and the maesters crowding over him, whispering among themselves, hiding him from her view.

"What?" Mariah asked, her voice rusty as if from a long disuse. "What's wrong with him?"

The wetnurse, selected in great haste by Naerys, came to her, smiling. "All is fine, Your Grace," she said. "They had already prepared linens and herbs to ease his breathing but they cannot figure out how to do it with such a _noisy_ little one."

Mariah listened intently. The girl was right: beneath the old men's words of wisdom, her son was expressing his dislike of his new circumstances most vocally. She smiled and relaxed, finally.

"Give him to me, Your Grace," Lady Butterwell said some time later. "Let me show him to the King."

 _You think that's going to win you his favour?_ Mariah wondered. Could the woman really be this stupid? Suddenly afraid of what might happened, she held the newborn tight. To everyone's satisfaction, he had found this new accommodation comfortable and stopped wailing. His breath was small puffs of warmth against Mariah's chest. The little hair he had shone silver in the candlelight. He had yet to grow nails but he had taken suck most energetically. He'd grow up to be hale and hearty, of that she was sure.

"If the King wants to see his grandson, he might visit here," she said. By now, she had been washed and changed, so in the unlikely event that Aegon displayed such a wish, she was decent. "And my husband as well," she added after a brief hesitation. She didn't want to break the Targaryen custom of presenting a newborn to their father right now but the thought of letting the new little one out of her arms scared her too much.

Daeron came in immediately, just as she knew he would. The King, she hadn't expected. And when she saw his dismay at the sight of the small and wrinkled, disproportionate but not misshapen creature, with skin that was translucent but also very fair, hair that was mere strands here and there but silver ones, the eyes Mariah was sure were a shade of purple – when she saw his disappointment at this so _Targaryen_ looking baby, she couldn't help it: she laughed in triumph.


	2. The Burden

**Thanks, VVSINGOFTHECROSS, for reviewing!**

Mirror Image Masked in Mist

 _The Burden_

He had only been two when they had left King's Landing, so he didn't remember anything of their life there. But he was sure Mya and Gwenys didn't remember all this much either. It was all just talk. He was barely four when he announced that their tales of King's Landing sounded a lot like the stories the septa told all of them. They had blushed and denied, of course, but even at this tender age, he could say they were lying.

His mother certainly remembered all about King's Landing but _she_ didn't like to talk about that. From time to time, news arrived and although those weren't discussed in front of the children, Brynden noticed how they made her sadder, more pensive. More scared.

"Would you have him if he decides to come back to you?" he once heard his grandmother ask.

His mother laughed. It was not a merry laugh. "It isn't as if I'd have a choice, is it?" she replied. "But he won't. When leaving people behind, he truly leaves them behind."

Lady Blackwood's embroidery fell in her lap. "He returned to that Bracken," she said.

"It was a different one." Melissa's voice was strained.

"Ah yes. I forgot."

"I won't forget," Melissa whispered. "Because it cost the realm a man far better than Aegon Targaryen could ever hope to be – if he hopes that at all. But if he decides that he wants me back – which he won't – I'll go to him, of course, or our House will pay. And I have children who has next to none prospects here. Yes, I will go."

"Hush!" her mother said abruptly. "Brynden, he's listening."

How had she known? He had been so careful! He kept playing battle with his wooden men-at-arms but inwardly, he was more disturbed than he wanted to show. So his mother was ready to do something she truly didn't want to, just because of them?

As a whole, his life in Blackwood was a happy one. He had most of his whims satisfied, either by his elders or, as it happened more often, by his own resourcefulness. He had his sisters and cousins who were about his own age, so they accepted him as one of their own, no different from them. In the beginning, he was stunned and stung to see that newcomers to Raventree Hall startled at the sight of him but later, he started deriving amusement from popping up where he wasn't expected and scaring them. After nightfall, in the yard, was the perfect time. Into the faintly lit corners where they didn't understand immediately that what they were seeing was a mortal boy and not something the old gods sent to them from the nearby godswood.

He was about seven when he realized that just showing to people for the merest shadow of a moment and then disappearing, keeping them insecure of their own sight and mind was something that gave him power over them. He stashed away this knowledge, the same way he did with his many wooden men-at-arms, to take it out when he needed it. No, not a bad life at all.

And still there were those moments when he acutely realized what he was behind the wits Maester Arval so praised. A liability. A burden.

"We'll find him a parcel of land, and a good one," his grandfather promised. "Or a place in Jonor's service. He'll be taken care of."

 _I can take care of myself_ , Brynden thought, but the truth was, he couldn't. Not yet. And while growing up, he resented the downing realization that all he'd have would be what his mother's family would give him. What they wanted to give him, because he had nothing of his own.

"I never know what to expect," his mother once said to her brother, extremely agitated. "Aegon sends me enough for the children's upkeep, but it varies from great indulgence to the merest necessities. I can make no plans… and I have to think of their future. Perhaps with decent dowries…"

Jonor Blackwood didn't reply. Brynden already knew that there was nothing that could be said. A bastard, even a royal one, would need more than a decent dowry to make a good match. And they needed even two… before starting to think about his own future. Once again, he felt anger and helplessness at the realization what a burden they were to their mother. She couldn't even wed, not while that King lived.

* * *

The man of straw approached the archway, hesitated, stumbled, started to fall back but managed to straighten himself and kept his awkward progression to the safety of the practice storages.

Daeron Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, chuckled and craned his neck in an attempt to see better from the covered colonnade. The harsh rain was obscuring his view somewhat but just like he expected, when the dummy reached the archway, the person pushing it from behind became visible to Daeron. His youngest son, quite unrecognizable from all the falls in the mud he had taken during the trip. Of course, with all the water it had soaked, the straw dummy had become at least twice as heavy. Maekar looked ridiculous, with all the might of his six years and reaching all but the chest of the scarecrow. There wasn't a strand of hair that was still silver on his head – all of him was evenly brown. The sight made Daeron smile – his first smile of this day, as he wasn't wont to those when he got letters from his father.

"Maekar!" he yelled and when his son looked up, he motioned him upstairs.

Maekar carefully propped the dummy against the wall and ran up the steps.

"Leave him where he is," Daeron said. "He's so soaked it that they'll never get him dried up. He's practically useless now. Do you understand?"

Maekar nodded but only a minute later, the straw man started his way again. _As stubborn as his mother_ , Daeron thought with another smile. But he stopped smiling when the boy emerged from the armoury with his little bow and a quiver of arrows. The rain was getting colder, the storm was approaching. His face became even more concerned when his son headed for a side gate quite alone. "Go back!" he yelled. "And wash yourself! Else we'll have to cut your hair off if it dries off like this."

A moment too late, he realized that he should not have said the latter, perhaps. Maekar would love to have his hair cut off. He hated combs.

When he saw that his son was on the way back to his rooms, Daeron headed for the practice gallery. As he expected for a rainy day, it was full of boys working on their technique in the safety of a dry space. He nodded at the master-at-arms who left Baelor's side immediately and hurried to him.

"Have you left this gallery for the last hour?" Daeron asked without losing time for small talk and comments on the children's progress.

Winstan looked at him with surprise. "No, Your Grace. Why are you asking?"

"Maekar was taking the dummy back to the storage. I thought he had had a practice outside. I can see it was so… but he was on his own. Just before I came here, I had to stop him from going out with his bow. Out of the castle, alone! In the coming storm! What should I think?"

The man went white. "But Your Grace… He told me that you had allowed him to continue his practice for some extra hours outdoors… That he could go out whenever he chose. He's so well-behaved, I never thought…"

Daeron shook his head, disbelieving.

"That's nonsense," Baelor said, appearing all of a sudden at his father's side. "Maekar doesn't lie."

Yes, that was it. Maekar never lied. Even when he spoke untruths, they were a product of a child's imagination, not something he said knowing to be false.

That conversation. That time last week when Maekar had approached him with a plea. Daeron had been so busy preparing for the meeting with the Marcher lords that he had said, "Yes, yes," before he could hear what the boy wanted. He had intended to ask later. He had forgotten. Like many other times, he trusted his son's judgment when this time, he really shouldn't have. As reliable as Maekar was, he was still six.

"Mother, am I going to be a burden?" Maekar asked a few weeks later.

The Princess of Dragonstone looked up from the pot of red flowers that she was inspecting. "No. Why do you ask?"

"Because people say I will be."

"Who?" she asked, surprised. The general consensus in the castle was that her youngest was the best child Dragonstone had seen, not giving anyone a moment of trouble. Even Baelor hadn't been this well-mannered at this age, nor so prone to be left to his own devices.

"Everyone. When they think I can't hear. They say Baelor will be King and Aerys his Hand while I'll only be the one they must make accommodations for."

Mariah slowly turned, the pots of flowers that had just arrived from the Reach as a gift from Lady Hightower completely forgotten. "Baelor will be King, yes," she confirmed. "But he'll choose his Hand by merits. It will have to be someone deserving. Not Aerys, necessarily. And we'll make accommodations for all of you."

She realized her mistake a moment too late. With Aerys, such words would have been reassuring; with Rhaegel, they would have been unneeded because he never doubted that he would be loved and cared for. But Maekar? Since he was a tiny toddler, he'd throw a tantrum each time anyone tried to help him with anything. He was so intent on achieving things on his own.

"I don't want anyone to give anything to me!" he exclaimed now. "I can win it on my own. When I become the greatest knight in the realm…"

 _You'll still be your brother's subject_ , Mariah thought but she was not about to explain it to a child so young. Children needed to believe in tales and songs, and that they could be anything they wanted. Life would teach them otherwise soon enough. _If there is a throne at all when you come of age._ Because what could be Aegon's purpose in promulgating those disgusting rumours about his late wife if not an attempt to make Daeron's position more unstable? Last thing she had heard was that he had started showing extreme favour to Daena's boy. What could be the purpose of that? Mariah was afraid that she knew.

"Mother," Maekar said, louder, interrupting her thoughts, "are you listening?"

"Yes, of course," she replied, her eyes going back to the flowers. It was a good thing that they had been able to form some ties with the Tyrell. She had put an extra effort in this, feeling that her being Mariah Martell only impeded Daeron's relationship with them.

"Mother!" Now, there was rare anger in her son's voice. "Are you _listening_?"

"I am," she replied, realizing that she had no idea what he had been talking about a mere moment ago. "Listen," she suggested, "do you want to help me come up with places for those pots? There are so many of them, I can't come up with all the ideas on my own."

He immediately brightened up. "By colour!" he suggested immediately. "Let's make this hall the Blue Hall!"

Mariah smiled. "The Blue Hall it is, then," she agreed. It's been so long since she's had a longer moment with him. "Should we make a Sun one, what do you think?"

They had barely chosen the flowers for it when a handmaiden came in a hurry. "Your Grace…" she said breathlessly.

Mariah bit her lip. "Where is he now?" she asked. It could be anything, from running naked out into the storm from locking himself up in his bedchamber. One could never tell with Rhaegel.

"In the Painted Hall."

She was already circling the pots. Looking at her youngest, she felt how Maekar's mother disappeared to make room for Rhaegel's. "I'll come find you as soon as I can," she promised. "We'll go on with the pots later."

"Yes," he agreed. To her relief, there was no anger in his voice.

For a moment, he stared at her retreating frame and then headed for the opposite door. He could go to the library and read this book on strategy that he had had in mind for a while. He already knew that his mother wouldn't come back today and by the time they next saw each other, she would have forgotten already. If he was about to become the greatest warrior in the realm, he'd better start now. And when he did, everyone would see him and not forget about him the moment something more important appeared, making him feel like he already was the burden people whispered about.


	3. The Slight

**It's been more than a year but yes, I'm back to this story. Are you surprised? I am, for sure!**

Mirror Image Masked in Mist

 _The Slight_

"What does it say?"

His grandmother's voice was loud enough but it seemed that his mother did not hear the question. How strange! She was staring at the parchment in her lap as if the ink squiggles were not words but snakes rising their pointed heads to bite and poison her. Fear rushed through his veins even before his grandmother repeated, "Melissa! What does His Grace want?"

Slowly, as if her head was being tugged by an invisible rope, Melissa looked up. Her face was strangely wooden, as if someone had frosted it with too much snow and it now hurt. "He wants Brynden," she said. "He wants him to go to court."

The joy on his grandmother's face was quickly replaced by something that Brynden could not decipher. "Does he want you to accompany him?"

His mother laughed – her mouth moved and the sound coming out was that of laughter but it was not the warm laughter Brynden was used to. "No, he doesn't. I'm lucky in that, at least. But he wants Brynden. It was time for him to go to court and whatnot…"

For a moment, something in Brynden roared with joy but that quickly went away at the sight of his mother's face.

"Perhaps it is," his grandmother said but even Brynden could say that she did not mean it. "Soon, the boy will be of age to be fostered…"

"Yes, in three years!" Melissa snapped. "You know what this order means, Mother, I am certain. He didn't even ask about the girls. All he cares about is parading Brynden at court to wound the pride of the remaining Brackens…"

If she knew that he was at the other side of the open window, on the wooden bench at the terrace overlooking the dead godswood, she would have never said it. She rarely spoke about the King their father and never in negative terms. His brief joy at going to court was quickly drowned by the realization that he'd be paraded… He didn't know what the word meant but by the way his mother spoke it, it was something to be feared… To would the Brackens' pride? How could anyone's pride be wounded? Surely one could not take a sword to it? But when he asked his mother, late at night as she came to his chamber before he went to sleep, she gave him a look of dismay. "You should not eavesdrop on people, Brynden! If you wanted to know something, you should have just asked me."

"Would you have told me?" he asked a little sleepily – it was quite late indeed. Normally, his mother came a lot earlier.

Melissa sighed. "Probably not," she said. "You should never repeat what you heard, Brynden. Never. In front of anyone. But you should be careful. Do show your father due respect. He is your father and our king besides. But try not to love him, as charming as he decides to be. He cannot be relied on. He can send you back in disgrace whenever he decides – and he often doesn't think before making a decision."

"So I'm going to leave?"

She reached down and clutched him tight. "I do not dare refuse," she said, leaving him petrified by the words that he had never heard from her before. She had never not dared anything. She had never feared anything.

* * *

The guards waited in full formation in the bailey. The galleries were filled with courtiers who had come to bid farewell or leave themselves. Before the long rectangular building near the White Sword Tower, a wheelhouse with twelve horses stood ready. The three gates that would let the party out of the Red Keep had been opened since dawn but the longer no one came out of the Prince of Dragonstone's chambers, the more the muttering and speculations grew.

Mariah Martell, the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, now stood in front of a door flanked by two gold cloaks who refused to move away even at her command.

"My lady," Ilena Redtree who had come with her, "let's go back. They're right, it isn't safe."

Mariah gave her a withering look, fear coursing through her veins and giving additional edge to her voice. "I don't remember asking about your opinion, Ilena. And certainly not about theirs! You can go back. You, open the door."

The two men looked at each other and the shorter one shook his head. "I am sorry, Your Grace. I cannot. The King himself told us…"

"The King won't live forever," Mariah said icily. "And it won't be wise of you to forget who is going to succeed him, for I surely won't forget your faces."

They shifted their weight, caught between a rock and a hard place, between a woman who would be all powerful tomorrow and a man who was all powerful today. But at the end, they didn't step away and when she walked straight to them, they brought their spears closer to bar her way.

From a side corridor, the Grand Maester himself appeared, carrying a few bottles that he almost dropped when he saw the two young women.

"Your Grace, I beg you to leave these chambers at once!"

"Not before I see my son. What's going on, Grand Maester Milladron? What's wrong with him? Do you really think you can stop me from entering?"

"Yes," he said bluntly. "I'm sorry to say it, but it's the speckled monster we're dealing with. If you as much as breathe the same air as the Prince, you can give the infection to your lord husband or your other sons. I cannot allow this and I'm sure the King will understand my reasons."

Mariah turned so white that he rushed to steady her and she let him lead her to the nearest bench carved in the thick wall. Ilena rushed to fetch some water and Mariah's fingers dug into the Grand Maester's painfully. "The speckled monster? Are you sure? How can that be? He hasn't had any contacts with anyone who has it, I'm sure."

"But he takes part in processions, doesn't he? All it takes is one poor soul too close. The guards cannot keep the air away, Your Grace."

She shook her head wildly, insistently. "But he doesn't get ill," she insisted. "Even when he was little, he rarely succumbed to any children's disease."

But she immediately saw that the conclusions the Grand Maester drew from this bit of information differed from hers considerably. "This isn't good, Your Grace. Children need to get ill and recover from small ailments. It isn't good when their first clash with one is something so major," he went on and cursed himself when the horror on her face intensified. "We're doing all that we can. There are people who survived it."

"How many?" she asked desperately.

He looked down. "Not many."

"So I know," she murmured and rose. "I'm going inside."

"No," he said. "Forgive me, my lady, but you aren't."

It was a measure of just how little influence she and Daeron held in this castle that the gold cloaks listened to the Grand Maester and not her.

"Of course they'd listen to the Grand Maester," Aegon said irritably when she brought the matter before him. "No one wants you to spread the disease in the Red Keep. And you can't do anything for Maekar anyway. He's being cared for by the best minds of the land. Worried mothers are of no use in such circumstances."

"He's right, Mariah," Daeron said reluctantly. "The speckled monster is extremely contagious. Think about the rest of them!"

But she couldn't. It was like this when Rhaegel had one of his spells. She couldn't think of anything and anyone else. Only, Rhaegel's spells never posed a danger to his life. And she didn't trust the maesters. Even the Grand Maester. There were no people of decency in her goodfather's court.

"I won't go out before he's better," she offered, deeming it a reasonable compromise. "This way, everyone will be safe."

Daeron gave her a look of dark horror, the thought of losing both her and Maekar too terrible to contemplate. "I cannot allow this," he said. "You know I can't."

Aegon smiled.

"I never thought I'd see the day you side with him against me," Mariah spat.

"That isn't what I am doing."

But the drama had become too intensified for the King, it seemed. He struggled to his feet. "You're such a fool," he said. "There is something wrong with you mothers anyway. He'll die anyway, no matter what you do, so you can make some better use of your time. Go to the sept like Naerys would have done and pray. And don't forget to include the bit about his looks," he added. "The lucky few who survive the disease are left so disfigured that they can never show their faces in public."

"Why, thank you for reminding us," Daeron snapped back. "We'll think of this bridge when it's time to cross it. For now, we'll be pleased just with him surviving."

For a while, Aegon stared at them, a slow smile curving his lips and transfiguring his bloated face into something gruesome to see. "I'll let you know what the outcome was, one way or another," he said. "You are no maesters and you'll be of no use to him, so I'd really advise you to go forward with your plans. You are going back to Dragonstone, aren't you?"

Even Daeron recoiled, stunned by such heartlessness, and Aegon immediately noticed his weakness. Like a hunting animal, the young man thought. _He smelled it._ But Daeron was too preoccupied to care. "Not before he gets better," he said.

"Yes, before," Aegon said. "We can take care of him just as well without you as we would with you here. I am sure my sweet Serenei will oversee his recovery… if he does live through the peak of the ailment and can be looked upon without a tender soul swooning."

He didn't need to finish. His meaning was clear. If Maekar survived, if he, by some miracle remained untouched by the aftermath, he and Serenei of Lys would take care to turn him into everything Daeron and Mariah despised.

Mariah's hand flew to her throat and then desperately sought a support but found none. Her feet could no longer support her and when she collapsed in a cloud of blue silks, Aegon smiled again. Finally, he had found this stubborn Dorniswoman's weak spot.

He'd have great fun being a devoted grandfather. A great fun indeed. If he got the chance.


End file.
